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_ One day, M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was putting in order
the phials and cups on the marble of the commode, bent over Marius
and said to him in his tenderest accents: "Look here, my little Marius,
if I were in your place, I would eat meat now in preference to fish.
A fried sole is excellent to begin a convalescence with, but a good
cutlet is needed to put a sick man on his feet."
Marius, who had almost entirely recovered his strength,
collected the whole of it, drew himself up into a sitting posture,
laid his two clenched fists on the sheets of his bed, looked his
grandfather in the face, assumed a terrible air, and said:
"This leads me to say something to you."
"What is it?"
"That I wish to marry."
"Agreed," said his grandfather.--And he burst out laughing.
"How agreed?"
"Yes, agreed. You shall have your little girl."
Marius, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock,
trembled in every limb.
M. Gillenormand went on:
"Yes, you shall have her, that pretty little girl of yours.
She comes every day in the shape of an old gentleman to inquire
after you. Ever since you were wounded, she has passed her time
in weeping and making lint. I have made inquiries. She lives
in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7. Ah! There we have it!
Ah! so you want her! Well, you shall have her. You're caught.
You had arranged your little plot, you had said to yourself:--`I'm
going to signify this squarely to my grandfather, to that mummy
of the Regency and of the Directory, to that ancient beau, to that
Dorante turned Geronte; he has indulged in his frivolities also,
that he has, and he has had his love affairs, and his grisettes
and his Cosettes; he has made his rustle, he has had his wings,
he has eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must remember it.'
Ah! you take the cockchafer by the horns. That's good. I offer
you a cutlet and you answer me: `By the way, I want to marry.'
There's a transition for you! Ah! you reckoned on a bickering!
You do not know that I am an old coward. What do you say to that?
You are vexed? You did not expect to find your grandfather still
more foolish than yourself, you are wasting the discourse which
you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that's vexatious.
Well, so much the worse, rage away. I'll do whatever you wish,
and that cuts you short, imbecile! Listen. I have made my inquiries,
I'm cunning too; she is charming, she is discreet, it is not true
about the lancer, she has made heaps of lint, she's a jewel,
she adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us,
her coffin would have accompanied mine. I have had an idea,
ever since you have been better, of simply planting her at your bedside,
but it is only in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides
of handsome young wounded men who interest them. It is not done.
What would your aunt have said to it? You were nude three quarters
of the time, my good fellow. Ask Nicolette, who has not left you
for a moment, if there was any possibility of having a woman here.
And then, what would the doctor have said? A pretty girl does
not cure a man of fever. In short, it's all right, let us say no
more about it, all's said, all's done, it's all settled, take her.
Such is my ferocity. You see, I perceived that you did not love me.
I said to myself: `Here now, I have my little Cosette right under
my hand, I'm going to give her to him, he will be obliged to love
me a little then, or he must tell the reason why.' Ah! so you
thought that the old man was going to storm, to put on a big voice,
to shout no, and to lift his cane at all that aurora. Not a bit
of it. Cosette, so be it; love, so be it; I ask nothing better.
Pray take the trouble of getting married, sir. Be happy, my well-beloved
child."
That said, the old man burst forth into sobs.
And he seized Marius' head, and pressed it with both arms against
his breast, and both fell to weeping. This is one of the forms
of supreme happiness.
"Father!" cried Marius.
"Ah, so you love me!" said the old man.
An ineffable moment ensued. They were choking and could not speak.
At length the old man stammered:
"Come! his mouth is unstopped at last. He has said: `Father' to me."
Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms, and said gently:
"But, father, now that I am quite well, it seems to me that I
might see her."
"Agreed again, you shall see her to-morrow."
"Father!"
"What?"
"Why not to-day?"
"Well, to-day then. Let it be to-day. You have called me `father'
three times, and it is worth it. I will attend to it. She shall
be brought hither. Agreed, I tell you. It has already been put
into verse. This is the ending of the elegy of the `Jeune Malade'
by Andre Chenier, by Andre Chenier whose throat was cut by the ras .
. . by the giants of '93."
M. Gillenormand fancied that he detected a faint frown on the part
of Marius, who, in truth, as we must admit, was no longer listening
to him, and who was thinking far more of Cosette than of 1793.
The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced
Andre Chenier, resumed precipitately:
"Cut his throat is not the word. The fact is that the great
revolutionary geniuses, who were not malicious, that is incontestable,
who were heroes, pardi! found that Andre Chenier embarrassed
them somewhat, and they had him guillot . . . that is to say,
those great men on the 7th of Thermidor, besought Andre Chenier,
in the interests of public safety, to be so good as to go . . ."
M. Gillenormand, clutched by the throat by his own phrase,
could not proceed. Being able neither to finish it nor to retract it,
while his daughter arranged the pillow behind Marius, who was
overwhelmed with so many emotions, the old man rushed headlong,
with as much rapidity as his age permitted, from the bed-chamber, shut
the door behind him, and, purple, choking and foaming at the mouth,
his eyes starting from his head, he found himself nose to nose
with honest Basque, who was blacking boots in the anteroom.
He seized Basque by the collar, and shouted full in his face
in fury:--"By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil,
those ruffians did assassinate him!"
"Who, sir?"
"Andre Chenier!"
"Yes, sir," said Basque in alarm. _
Read next: VOLUME V: BOOK FIFTH - GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER: CHAPTER IV. Mademoiselle Gillenormand Ends by No Longer Thinking It a Bad Thing That M. Fauchelevent Should Have Entered With Something Under His Arm
Read previous: VOLUME V: BOOK FIFTH - GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER: CHAPTER II. Marius, Emerging from Civil War, Makes Ready for Domestic War
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